In Democratic Individuality, I argued that at a high level of abstraction, modern conservatives, liberals and radicals believe that the best economic, social and political institutions foster each person’s individuality. Their differences are largely empirical or social theoretical. All clash with modern authoritarians. I will take up practical issues such as torture and the lineage of the neocons and link them to larger issues in how we conceive a decent regime, locally and internationally.

About Me

I am John Evans professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and author of Marx's Politics:Communists and Citizens (Rutgers, 1980), Democratic Individuality (Cambridge, 1990), Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy (1999) and Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence (Chicago March, 2012).

Followers

Monday, August 29, 2016

1.Is War against Russia/Putin and his rightist aficianados anti-racist?

In her campaign, Hillary Clinton is
not directly discussing foreign policy, beyond being "tough" and
"responsible," with the American people. But the theme of
Putin/Russian dangerousness is now begin constantly used to deflect attention
from criticisms and attack Trump. In addition, her entourage – as
well as those who are striving for major appointment - sharply press plans for
escalating war in the Ukraine and Syria.These threaten larger war against a nuclear-armed opponent. This
is, to say the least, not smart; it is also, from the standpoint of democratic
practices, deeply corrupt. Hillary's new fan, Robert Kagan, Project for a
New American Century leader, has spoken repeatedly of "guiding" a
reluctant public, sick of crazy and unending wars, back into the belligerent
fold.

***

But note the
manipulativeness from thepoint of view
of the very idea of a democracy of using being a "responsible National
Security Candidate" versus the twitchy fingered, racist monster Trump to
put over new - not publicized by the corporate media - wars.

***

Now in contrast,
Hillary's apt detailing of Trump's long career of racism Thursday at a
community college in Reno is a breath of fresh air in the campaign. Listen here.

***

"Make America Hate
Again." Trump brings the lynchers and attackers, "the white
nationalists" or more aptly, white supremacists, out of the sewers into
American streets, into the "mainstream." as Clinton underlined.
"Law and Order" - praise police who murder innocents.At a high school basketball game in Iowa,
racists chant "Trump," "Trump" while attacking players on the other team.

***

But Hillary's only
sour point in the Reno speech was to link Trump's fascism internationally, as
puppet, to Russia/Putin. In a way, this is a smooth move politically,
since it wraps Putin's support of fascists/racists from Marine Le Pen in France
to Golden Dawn in Greece, Nigel Farage in England, to Trump. And Trump chose Farage,
a racist toward immigrants, to campaign with last week.

Now
Trump and his previous aide Manafort are perhaps venally tied to - get a lot of
business or pay from - Russia, or the previous, pro-Russian ruler in the
Ukraine.

***

Hillary was moving,
her press flacks said, towards a Lyndon B. Johnson theme against Goldwater from
1964. She claimed rightly to speak for “responsible” Republicans, even
Ted Cruz whose father Trump imagined an assassin in virtue of being...Cuban.
She reached out to John McCain, whom she described, in contrast to Trump,
as standing up to his supporters' racist illusions in 2008 about candidate
Obama.

***

But
Hillary is no longer just reaching out to elite Republicans. In this speech, she reached out to ordinary voters. She has strong leads among suburban whites,
particularly women, who do not support racism.She has broad support among Catholics. The Pope criticized the wall, and
Trump disparaged him.Many Catholics,
Irish, Italian, Polish, Mexican, recall the bigotries their grandparents
were subjected to.They sympathize with
poor Latinos who risk all to come to America.

***

This aim to
mobilize an anti-racist center to American politics is a good one to stake a
campaign on. Against Bernie Sanders, Hillary had no focus except
deflection.Sanders is much easier to
like, particularly among young people (those under 40...), because he has stood for the same decent
program all the way through.And Hillary
now has adopted a common good domestic program importantly because of the Bernie
effect. Further, she can’t mainly abandon it
without losing black, Chicano, environmental support in the next election...

***

Against Trump, she now has a telling
theme: paranoia and prejudice.Steven
Bannon, the publisher of Breitbart “news” is now Trump’s manager.Breitbart actually published bizarre
headlines which Hillary read, including the odious fantasy that only “child
actors” were killed at Sandy Hook.And
she wondered rightly what kind of creature could have so little heart…

***

Hillary is, compared to Trump, “responsible” in national security. But of course
Hillary herself is no anti-racist internationally. For instance, she
extols the Israeli occupation and denounces both Palestinians and BDS -
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Jewish Voice for Peace and many other Jews,
myself included, actively pursue BDS.For
Boycott is the same nonviolent tactic used by Martin Luther King in Montgomery. It is nonviolent where the Israeli government, the Democrats' funder Chaim Saban (Hillary wrote him a letter about BDS) and Clinton all denounce violence. No Palestinian approach to lifting the occupation is acceptable to Hillary.

Hillary is very good about Arabs and Muslims domestically, except
on this fundamental issue.

***

And contrary to Hillary,
Russia is not a leading danger to the US. Russia asked to join NATO in 1991, and the US
and Europe refused. Instead, the US and NATO expanding right up to
Russia's border have created the danger...

***

In
addition, attacking Russia and Iran in Syria and Iraq, instead of defeating
Daeesh, will not make Americans or most people in the world safer.

***

This larger war internationally may
seem superficially linked to domestic opposition to Trump’s racism. For again,
Hillary names Putin as the arch-authoritarian and racist villain behind Farage
and Trump and Golden Dawn and Le Pen (Le Pen has frighteningly a pretty
good chance of becoming prime minister in France). But Hillary's stance,
in fact, provokes new, perhaps nuclear dangers and probably strengthens –
it certainly does nothing to defeat -Daeesh.

***

I have written a number of
posts - see here, here and here - on the sudden and bizarre
transformation of official Democrats into a war party. The primary season,
where Bernie Sanders pressed no-regime change as a policy and said in New York
that Palestinians are human and deserve recognition, is no more...

***

These "morning in
America" Democrats are not the rank and file who shouted "No
more wars!" at the Convention. The latter were obscured by chants
"USA" "USA" from Clinton delegates and panned away from
/suppressed by CNN and MSNBC.

Of course, in and
beyond the Democrats and the corporate media, the anti-war American public, particularly
young people, are all still here...

2.Robert Kagan and Hillary’s coterie

Hillary has most succeeded by
converting/ being influenced by the Project for a New American Century's Robert
Kagan. Kagan fiercely campaigned for the aggression in Iraq. He is
almost as ugly in this regard as Bill Kristol.

***

But Kagan has more recently had moments of decency, for example, being repelled
by Guantanamo and torture, or denouncing Trump ("This is how fascism comes
to America." from the Washington Posthere). He
is a decent scholar on the massacres/genocide against indigenous people.
See Dangerous Nation, ch. 1, "The First Imperialists."
Thus, Kagan traces the real history, full of massacres, of what he calls "liberal imperialism."His view is easily superior to the stereotypical claim that
the US was importantly “isolationist.” But the liberalism here is racist and
blood-soaked.Even Lincoln in the West
waged a war of genocide against indigenous people, while waging a war against bondage in the South.

***

In genocides in the
United States and aggressions inVietnam, and Iraq, in Guantanamo and throughout Latin America, inter
alia, Kagan's term is an insult to liberalism. Yes,
"liberalism," in its very gradual emergence as a viewpoint, has
been historically tied to the murders of settler-colonialism, colonialism
and aggression. It is "dangerous" not just to
the powers of "old Europe" but to millions of ordinary people...

***

But in
contrast, liberalism is a public theory of how economic, social and political
institutions which recognize the equal freedom or basic rights of each person
enable the diverse flourishing of many individualities.Individuality: each person chooses the life
she sees fit and can change that conception at her own will, so long as she
does not fundamentally harm others.

And a view that does not recognize
all as human, casts away lives for Imperial advantage, is murderous, imperial,
authoritarian and anti-liberal toward those it oppresses is not liberal.

***

Kagan thinks that
liberal "world order" in which he conjoins formal democracy,
eventually some real protection of human rights, and free markets, must be
maintained and advanced by American power. But are drones today and
bombs, murdering civilians, "liberal imperialism"? From
the perspective of the powerful, are they even clever? Kagan, the
neo-con, thinks so.

***

In The
World America Made (a robustly arrogant title), he asserts, "[The
US's] efforts to root out Al-Qaeda have been remarkably successful, especially
compared to the failures to disrupt terrorist networks and stop terrorist
networks of the 1990s." (p. 124). Note the faint, self-deluded
praise merely by comparison.

***

In
fact, through its series of military sorties into the Middle East, including the
latest aggression in Iraq, US efforts have steadily produced even worse dangers
like Daeesh. Except for the slave patrols/KKK in the South and the American government's
aggressions against indigenous people, “terrorism”
was not a problem in the US until the US invaded the Middle East.
Yet with each new infusion of bombs and troops, the wars stretch on, the dangers
to Americans – and everyone else – increase. See Andrew Bacevich, America's
Wars for the Greater Middle East: A Military Historyhere. Seymour Hersh, The Killing of
Osama Bin Ladenhere.

***

Even the formerly monstrous
imperial strategist, Zbigniew Brzezinski, now names the justice of Arab claims
of abuse. In 2016, he has backed away from his vision of the US unipower. Brzezinski now sees the United States, instead as the most powerful, regional actor
rather than making war everywhere. See "Toward a Global
Realignment," The American Interest here.

***

In contrast, Kagan's
theme is that "Superpowers don't get to retire" here. His core idea is that a liberal
world order requires often contentious, murderous exercises of power,

***

Let us consider the current US
arming/refueling of the Saudi bombing of Yemen. Saudi Arabia bombs
schools routinely as well as Doctors without Borders hospitals. And Yemenis
see American power as allied with the Saudi family (Saudi Arabia is named for
this single family of rulers...). Kagan crows about taking out Al-Qaeda
leaders - with drones et al. But has not the US, through this wanton
bombing of civilians produced something that will worsen over time? Will
not the slaughter of Yemeni innocents - here
and The New York Times' "America is Complicit in the Carnage
in Yemen" here - lead to blowback over the next 20 years
in the US...?

***

Contrary to Kagan, the
"superpower" needs to retire at minimum from military destruction in
the Middle East...

***

But Hillary and even the
wiser Barack have bought into Kagan's thesis, not just Kagan into Hillary.
This is dangerous, as Barack's conduct in office proves: reliance on
drones which often kill civilians, including Americans, refusal to set up
an independent panel to prosecute officials who committed torture, harsh
persecution of whistle-blowers, overthrow (at Hillary's instigation) of the
elected government of Honduras and support of a military regime, murdering
environmentalists, including, Berta Caceres, the heroic Lenca activist here, reliance on the torturer/killer John
Brennan, bombing (or boots on the ground) in 8 countries, the latest in Sert,
Libya, and the like.

***

And Hillary lacks Barack's
restraint. She currently supports the treaty with Iran, but it is unclear
she would have made it. Hillary has constantly staked out positions to
the right of Barack, on bombing Syria, for example. Her Democratic
Convention - "USA!" "USA!" - is represented by marine
General John Allen. He brings the domestic decency and inclusion of her
program together with more war against Putin. Allen is now the symbol/spokesperson
for a dangerous, imperial effort that hopes to include everyone.

***

Hillary's move toward war is
thus not just an electoral strategy - "Morning in America,"
Now, Hillary has seized "Reagan's themes," "the
Democrats are now the Republicans on national security," Hillary is "tough
and responsible" and Trump is, in fact, a twitchy fingered, sexist monster. Trump is
patriarchally trying out the line Hillary "doesn't look well, Hillary
doesn't have stamina" and screams ignorantly about bigotry. "The Donald" should look in the mirror…

***

But
Hillary also means to rely on force.

***

With the attack on all things Russian,
Hillary moves American elite policy into a more warlike mode. See Glenn
Greenwald, "Democrats Tactic of Accusing Critics of Kremlin
Allegiance has Long, Ugly History in U.S." here.

3.Victoria Nuland and Michelle Flournoy

A main evidence of Hillary's
push toward war - those who enthusiastically strive for promotion in a
Clinton administration - are Michelle Flournoy and Victoria Nuland.
Flournoy, future Pentagon Secretary, chairs the Center for a New American
Security. She is leading the charge for bombing Assad's forces and
perhaps Russian and Iranian targets in Syria, on behalf of Al-Nusra, an
Al-Qaida affiliate, which only recently moved away from Daeesh.Al-Nusra also detests America. See here.

***

Flournoy is echoed by chorus of
"51" diplomats in the State Department whose memo in a not before
publicized “backdoor” protest channel, was released to the New York Timeshere and printed in the main, front page column
(top right). It urged bombing with no specification of or even hope for
negotiation. It was, as it were, a signed application for advancement
under Hillary...

***

It was
also the New York Times (largely a
mouthpiece for the Hillary campaign) signaling what the new Presidency is
likely to bring.

***

In addition, Victoria
Nuland, the person whom John Kerry named the only "Dick Cheney/Hillary
Clinton alum," passed out cookies to Ukrainian democrats and called for
the U.S. arming them. Nuland opposes Obama's wiser policy, one more
cautious about Russia "escalation dominance." For Ukraine
borders Russia, and Russia has nearer weaponry and soldiers, is probably
more efficient there militarily than what the US can bring to bear.Consider their swift intervention in Syria and
un-US-like withdrawal.Russia also has
nuclear weapons.

***

Nuland is married to Bob
Kagan: "my Venus, my Mars, my earth," she says sweetly. Bob
never sends out a word she has not edited....

***

Obama has concentrated
on bombing Daeesh, including opening a new front in Sert in Libya.
Bombing, however, blows up many civilians and does little to suppress Daeesh.
That must be done through fighting.

***

Even
then, a defeated Daeesh could still recruit terrorists - they use in Europe,
after all, films of torture at Abu Ghraib, of indefinite detention at
Guantanamo, of US aggression against Iraq (a large Middle Eastern oil
producer, including destruction of civilians uncounted from
"Shock and Awe" on - Rumsfeld, haughtily, kept no count of Iraqi
casualties...), and the Israeli government's ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

***

Escalation and militarism are and create horrors ("blowback").

***

The
bipartisan, transadministration American campaign of aggression, torture and
occupation drives some young people to oppose injustice mistakenly by joining
or tolerating horrific organizations. Brzezinski's latest retreat, in this
regard, is wise.Doing something
actively to help the Palestinians, remove the radically unjust Israeli occupation would be wiser
still.

***.

Now Russia's
intervention in Syria and Iran in Iraq are, in fact, allied with America to
suppress Daeesh. Obama's treaty with Iran - taking on pro-Israel
Republican and Democratic frenzy/stupidity - gives the US some new leverage for
diplomacy, some independence from the reactionary Saudi Arabia-Israel alliance.
It permits what John Mearsheimer, "America Unhinged" in The National
Interest, has intelligently called off-shore balancing rather than
trying, through bombing or invasion, to control everything.

***

It is
the first step away from American invasions and militarism.

***

But if Hillary and her
coterie open up a two front war with Assad and Russia, and Iran, watch Obama's
attempts to do something better in the Middle East and extract the US from quagmires go up in smoke. Daeesh will gain more maneuverability. Another, larger war with Russia will escalate. For Hillary's campaign/the
corporate press aggravate war fever, as in the coverage even of the Olympics,
against Russia...

***

Here is a recent quote
from Robert Kagan, in his own mind, mocking Obama:

“I know Hillary
cares more about Ukraine than the current president does,” Kagan replied.
“[Obama] said to me [that he wouldn’t arm Ukraine because] he doesn’t want a
nuclear war with Russia,” he added,
rolling his eyes dismissively. “I don’t think Obama cares about Putin
anymore at all. I think he’s hopeless.” - Robert Kagan speaking at a
Democratic fundraiser for Hillary here.

***

Yes
"Superpowers must not retire," Kagan proclaims, even if it means nuclear
extinction...

Oops, even Bob
Kagan and Toria Nuland won't make it through that...

4.Hillary’s denunciations of Russia, silence about specific war plans

Now Joe Conason
is an intense Hillary supporter, my cousin, and a fine reporter for the Nation.
Peter Minowitz nitpicks, often justly, opponents of Leo Strauss though he often fails to write about the main issues in his own voice. Both have rightly
protested: "But Hillary is not on record (just yet, for
public consumption, in this campaign) supporting escalations against
Russia in Syria or in the Ukraine..."

***

They do not quite hear what they are saying.
Though converting the Democrats into a war party and surrounding herself
with advisors who urge diversionary wars, Hillary is not leveling with the
American people about what her anti-Russian campaign means. The Center for
a New American Security articles, the "backdoor complaint" of 51
State Department officials, Nuland inside and Kagan at the Hillary fundraiser
about the Ukraine are the advice coming from her coterie and those who vie to
be in it.

And Kagan merely draws the
implication of Hillary's speeches, even the latest one in Reno

***

That "3:AM"
Hillary, who uses the rhetoric of belligerence - Putin is master of all
European and American fascists - does not encourage these efforts needs to
be shown. It will probably take a new, anti-War movement from below,
starting now, to do ao.

5.The
dark side of the LBJ comparison

Now Hillary has a
monster opponent, someone one does not want to be on the same planet with,
odious, oozing all kinds of racism, a freaky man-child, stiffing even his own investors and of course those who work for him, calling at his own rallies for
the beating up his critics, particularly nonwhite ones, perhaps hoping to
fire a cruise missile against "Morning Joe" and Mika, or the rest of
us, a spinning casino man, the easily tweet-baited Trump. And the
establishment has treated ordinary people here so horribly that Trump can
capitalize, to some extent, on "damn the establishment" sentiment.
That sentiment, when misguided or thoughtless, can be an ingredient in
fascism.

***

So Hillary is, in fact,
responsible in national security compared to Twitchy Fingers. Her line
"Do you really want someone who can be set off by a tweet with his fingers
on the nuclear security codes" ought to have finished him. And that
was before Trump disgraced himself by denouncing Khizr and Ghazala
Khan.

***

And yet, Hillary also resembles
LBJ in a much uglier way. In 1964, President Johnson told Barry Goldwater
at Goldwater's security briefing that he was going to send many more troops to Vietnam in 1965. In the subsequent
November 1964, election, Johnson let Barry take the fall for being a
war-monger, for being irresponsible, for being "outside the
establishment."

***

LBJ had a famous commercial
mocking Barry of a little girl pulling daisy petals: a countdown to a nuclear
explosion. LBJ was a man "of Peace" against Goldwater, pretty
much as Hillary is, against Trump.

***

Now Hillary's anti-racism is,
once again, a breath of fresh air against Trump, and in certain ways, better
than LBJ domestically (her programs are not likely to be as strong without a
huge push from below, as LBJ was pushed by the civil rights movement and uprisings
in American cities).

***

But Martin Luther King had
LBJ's number. See "Breaking the Silence" here which is, sadly, as true today as when
Vincent Harding wrote the first draft and King gave it. See here. King's words are as true of
Hillary's militarism.

***

Without mass protest, extending more
powerfully the fierce "No More Wars" chants at the Democratic
Convention and starting now, Hillary will be no better than LBJ.
Obama's naïve adoption of the bipartisan, aggressive policy of
pushing NATO into the Ukraine, right up against Russia, was a terrible mistake,
mirroring what the Soviet Union did in Cuba in 1962. See here and
John Mearsheimer, "Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West's Fault: the liberal
delusions that provoked Putin," here.

***

Mearsheimer rightly suggests
making the Ukraine a neutral buffer state. This would give a fighting
chance for democrats from below to succeed there. Nuland/US maneuvering
against Russia, not so much...

***

Pushing right up to Russia's borders in the
Ukraine, Nuland hoped to overturn Russia with a comparable popular
uprising. This is not, in itself, a bad hope - as 1848, Vietnam, Arab
spring, the uprisings in Eastern Europe and Occupy, among others, show, there
are real solidarities between popular uprisings from below.

***

But Nuland's imperial hubris/blatant intervention rarely goes
well with democratic revolt. For Sophocles, Socrates and Thucydides, the
hubris of leaders was to imagine themselves gods, do wanton killings, and
fall.

***

Hubris about the color uprisings - the State Department/International
Republican Institute backed the uprising in Serbia (silencing any attempt for
democratic discussion from below beyond opposing a tyranny). That success leads directly to
the US's belligerence in the Ukraine.

***

It all
works if you believe, as those in the narrow circle of American power often do,
that any enemy will be cowed by US force. Such hubris isdangerous.

***

The post-Cold War era is
characterized, as Bob Kagan also likes to underline, by even more American
wars. That the US, with its dependence on militarism (an over a trillion
dollars a year military-industrial-Congressional-academic-think
tank-intelligence-foreign bases-foreign militaries armed to the teeth, as in
Saudi Arabia, with US weaponry complex), seeks peace more today than it did
during the Cold War, does not survive naked eye inspection...

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

My Daily Beast article on Karl May and Hitler's "Frontier": Wild West, Wild East - he liked to refer to "Ukrainian redskins" - was apparently the most looked at article on books in American media on Sunday - as listed in RealClearBooks.com.. The article itself reflects some 5 years of work (other scholars have been on to this issue quite a bit since 2012, particularly Carroll Kakel and Kristin Kopp) and breaks a lot of new ground on how genocide toward indigenous people comes back to haunts its perpetrators (and in addition, many, many ordinary people...). Who would have thought, after all, that the Wild West was the model for Lebensraum and World War II?